There is an increasing concern of customers related to health foods and fruit's juice has been revealed an important component of a healthy diet. Sector of industrialized juices is demonstrating a strong potential for increase, allowing the entrance of several companies into this market.
Juices for human consumption can be classified into five categories: I) natural juices: made directly from processing the fruit itself, squeezing or crushing it; II) powdered juices; III) concentrated juices: dehydrated natural juice with the purpose to reduce its volume; IV) ready to drink juices (nectar): composition made of juice's extract, water and several additives, such as sweeteners, flavoring, coloring and preservatives, to intensify, preserve and improve products features; V) pulp juices: characterized by absence, in their production, of any chemical and industrial preservation means or processes, being produced by freezing the pulp.
Orange juice is the most consumed in international market, and can be of two types, namely, concentrated and NFC.
The abbreviation NFC refers to juices “not from concentrate”, i.e., juices not made from concentrated, whole and natural ones, with no addition of preservatives or any other chemical product. The technology for NFC juices is very recent. The firsts NFC orange juices arose in U.S.A. in the 90's.
NFC was an answer to consumer's market for a natural product, because so far the market was supplied only with concentrated or reconstituted juices.
In processing of concentrated juice, water is removed and the juice is concentrated in a ratio of up to 1:6. In the bottling plants, juice is reconstituted (water is added), bottled and marketed. This process impaired the juice's quality, since it interfered negatively in taste, vitamins' concentration and scent.
The principle behind NFC is to produce a natural juice during crop (in Brazil 6 months per year), pasteurizing and storing in large stainless steel tanks in aseptic conditions to be marketed in bulk to several countries in the world throughout the year.
The definition of aseptic process in food industry is understood as providing a sterilized product within sterile container. In the case of NFC orange juice in bulk, “containers” are very large stainless steel tanks with storage capacity up to 6 million liters.
The development of technology for huge aseptic tanks and the whole aseptic transport chain, including specific trucks and ships, had a very important role for large scale production of NFC orange juice and its commercialization in several markets all over the world. With this technology, it was possible to store NFC orange juice for periods up to one year and to bottle the final product in the consumer market.
Aseptic tanks must be kept in environment with controlled temperature around 1° C.
Aseptic tanks and pipelines must be free of oxygen, to avoid oxidation of the juice. Thus, NFC aseptic tanks work with nitrogen, which is also used to regulate internal pressure thereof.
In case of orange juice, there are aseptic tanks in the extraction plants, in the export terminals (Santos—Brazil) and in the ports of destination (The Netherlands, Belgium, USA), as well as in ships and containers (tanks).
Production of NFC natural juices of several fruits already exists, besides orange juice.
The major challenge of NFC juices industry is to preserve the quality of their products.
To this purpose, productive and logistic chains are seen as a whole and microbiological control must be present in all steps and places.
Being a natural product, juice is a product very susceptible to contamination. It is necessary to insure that all pipelines and transfer and storage tanks have internal surfaces totally sterilized and free of pathogens that could spoil the juice.
As an example of NFC orange juice, the process can be summarized, from production until storage, in the following steps:                Extraction of juice        Removal of pulp        Aseptic pasteurization        Transference and storage in aseptic tanks        Destination of product to final manufacturer (bottling)        
The maintenance of aseptic state in every surface involved is extremely important in NFC process, considering that a single failure in disinfection process throughout the chain may compromise the integrity of millions of liters of juice.
In fact, the contact of products with surfaces poorly sanitized may increase the incidence of microorganisms, spoiling its intrinsic quality. In case of food products, lack of sanitization can lead to health problems, from a simple discomfort up to more severe consequences, such as intoxication or death.
Therefore, a very strict cleaning and sanitization program is adopted in plants, terminals, transportation trucks and ships.
All juice is tracked and product's samples are collected weekly for analysis.
The assurance of process is at cleaning and disinfection procedure and imperviousness of transfer lines and storage tanks.
The pipelines must be cleaned and disinfected after each juice passage between storage tanks, trucks and ships.
Disinfection of NFC aseptic tanks is an expensive and time-consuming process. It is mandatory when tanks are opened, whether for maintenance, or due to any problem of juice contamination.
Once opened, aseptic tank must be submitted to a very stringent cleaning and disinfection process before receiving juice again.
The average term to proceed with a cleaning and disinfection in a 6 million liters tank of NFC orange juice, performed in accordance with known techniques, takes about 20 days.
In summary, the process to release for use an aseptic tank comprises 3 steps:                1—Depressurization of the tank        2—CIP (clean in place) Process        3—Flooding (flooding in tank)        
In first step, the tank is opened and all nitrogen is removed from inside. This process is performed through release valves placed on top of the tanks.
In the second step, CIP (Clean in Place) process is performed including cleaning and disinfection steps.
In this process, as generally used in the industry, tanks, pipelines and equipment are sanitized without disassembling.
Sanitizing procedure of surfaces in contact with products comprises two different and complementary steps: cleaning and disinfection.
Cleaning is complete removal of solid residues present in surfaces, such as grease, residual products, dust and other foreign matter, generally performed with alkaline detergents.
Disinfection, or sanitization, is the reduction in the amount of microorganisms in surfaces down to a level that does not compromise product's safety and suitability. This step can be performed physically (by heating) or chemically. In first case heat can be transferred to the surface using steam or hot water. The use of steam presents limited application due to high costs, slowness in process and reduced lifetime of some equipment.
Chemical disinfection is preferably used by industries. The chosen sanitizer must be compatible with the treated surface, have a broad spectrum microbiological activity, act quickly on microorganisms, be stable and resistant to presence of organic material, have low corrosive and toxicity and low cost. Peracetic acid is one of sanitizers that best fulfill the currently market's requirements.
Disinfection procedure is made by means of a CIP system that includes a set of tanks (water, caustic soda, phosphoric/nitric acid and peracetic acid), a pumping system with high flow rate, and apparatus for internal dispersal within the tank, such as spray ball, rotating spray or scan jet. This system works to insure that the cleaning/disinfection solution reaches all points of the tank, including the top portion. A CIP system must work with pressures above 8 Bar to provide a good impact of chemical solutions with the tank/pipeline walls to remove any solid residual impregnated on the walls.
The basic CIP process into a NFC orange juice tank consists on:                1—Initial rinse        2—Apply solution with 2% of caustic soda        3—Rinse with water to remove residual caustic soda        4—Lighting Test: performed by quality control to verify existence or not of solid material in tank internal surface. It's the validation method of the first step of CIP process. If the lighting test indicates the presence of residual material, steps 2 and 3 must be repeated        5—Application of a phosphoric/nitric acid solution, which works as stripper, helping to eliminate mineral matter, which can be deposited on tanks and pipelines' internal walls. This application complements step 2, above, in which caustic soda works as degreasing agent        6—Application of paracetic acid solution: used to high-level disinfection of tanks and pipelines' internal walls. It is used in a concentration between 500-3000 ppm, in accordance with the quality procedure adopted.        
The third step is the most time consuming and expensive in the process. It refers to “Flooding”, i.e., flooding aseptic tank by a liquid. This must be made with an aseptic liquid to avoid risk of contamination of the tank's internal surfaces.
Flooding works to remove all oxygen present in tank, which is necessary in case of products subject to oxidation, such as vegetable juices. However, in case of products not affected by presence of oxygen in tank, the flooding step can be omitted, as detailed herein later.
The most used methods of solution to flood tanks of NFC orange juice are:                a) Solution with sterile water: pasteurized water is used as a mean to flood the tank. The time to perform this process (manufacturing sterile water) varies in accordance with capacity and idleness of the available pasteurizer. If we consider as an example a pasteurizer with production capacity of 50,000 l/h, 120 hours will be necessary to produce enough sterile water for a tank of 6 million liters.        b) Iodoform solution: a solution of water plus iodoform is used. Due to high cost and its suitability to reuse, such solution in general is stored in a tank for a period of up to 1 year. The transfer of solution between tanks is made by pumping and lasts near to 2-3 days for a tank of 6 million liters. After one year this solution must be disposed of.        c) Peracetic acid solution: an option of sanitizer where iodoform is prohibited, such as in the European Community. It is a very expensive solution and difficult to reuse due to instability of peracetic acid.        
After the tank flooding process, this tank is emptied. In this process N2 is used, which is injected to occupy empty space and maintain the tank's internal pressure within its ideal value. The flood process performed in accordance with the known art can take between 6-10 days.
After this step, the tank is able to be loaded with NFC orange juice.
As can be noted, the flood step is the most time consuming, laborious and expensive of all cleaning and disinfection process of tanks. As drawbacks of this step, the following aspects can me mentioned (for a tank of 6 million liters):                High consumption of water: 6,000,000 liters        High consumption of sanitizer solution: 11,000 liters        High consumption of energy (in case of pasteurized water): 1000 Kw/hour×120 hs=120,000 Kw.        High disposal cost: solution must be treated with neutralizer and anti-foaming.        Loss of one storage tank.        
As will be noted, the present invention presents significant advantages in comparison to current state of the art, the liquid flooding, with drastic reduction of involved resources in process. By way of comparison, we have:                Time spent in new procedure: 10 hours×6-10 days        Consumption of water: none×6,000,000 liters        Consumption of sanitizer solution: 50 liters×11,000 liters        Consumption of energy: 2 Kw/h×12 hs=24 Kw×120,000 Kw        Residue generation: 0×6,000,000 liters        Release of 1 tank to store NFC orange juice, with product's estimated value of US$2,5 million.        
Sanitizing activities of facilities and equipment as well as practices of personal care are as important as production activities. This is easily demonstrated by the very large number of written procedures and instructions about cleaning and disinfection in several manufacturing steps.
Sanitization procedures must also be understood as being of interest to public health and environment.
There is a permanent challenge to establish a sanitization procedure that aims an increase of effectiveness and reduction of costs. Parameters involved in process, such as temperatures, concentrations, time and volume of solution must be reduced as much as possible. Saving water is a goal to be reached, by reducing its cost and subsequent reduction of effluent generation.
The disinfection step of a sanitization process made by a chemical agent is performed with a sanitizing solution in liquid state that must get in contact with every surface that gets in contact with product, for a minimum time, in accordance with concentration of sanitizer in solution. Depending on the size of surface being treated, the volume of consumed sanitizing solution can be from dozens of m3 and time spent can be of a few hours. It means that there is a large consumption of water, sanitizer product, energy (pumps to provide circulation of solution) and effluents generation, that must be treated before being disposed to the environment.
Besides the drawbacks above mentioned, some disinfection processes in tanks and reservoirs are performed manually, where workers have to come inside confined spaces to proceed with application of sanitizer product. It is considered a high-risk activity, due to confined ambient and exposal of these people to toxic gases arising from the evaporation of sanitizing products.
Patent document WO2009043559, entitled Device and method for cleaning closed spaces, refers to a physical method based in use of steam generator, such steam introduced into a closed space for a controlled period, enough to transfer heat to the surface. However, the use of steam presents limited application due to high costs, slowness in process and reduced lifetime of some equipment.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,524,454, entitled Sanitation Method for Disinfection of Enclosed Spaces, describes a movable equipment containing a reservoir of sanitizing liquid in which piezoelectric elements are provided that, when being energized by ultrasonic frequency signals, originate a fog of droplets of such liquid, such fog being carried to an output nozzle through a fan. As indicated by the title, the invention aims disinfection of spaces, especially inhabitable spaces, such as rooms in buildings, in order to avoid proliferation of harmful microorganisms, such as fungi, bacteria and other biological agents. The method described in that document is not applied to sterilization of aseptic tanks and pipelines of large volume designed to store liquid products or similar.
Publication US2007/0224080, entitled Ultrasonic Sanitation Device and Associated Methods, describes an improvement of the previous patent, and is based in the same principles. Such improvements are mainly related to the construction of the device, and the document also details more completely the composition of used liquid, reciting the sanitizing agents. As in the above-mentioned document, its function is limited to sanitization of inhabitable environments, including houses, hospitals, and vehicles such as buses, ambulances, ships, and railroad cars among others. Equipment and method described within that document, however, are not applicable to sanitization of aseptic tanks and pipelines for liquid materials or the like.